


Our daughters of sorrow

by Anonymous



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/F, Female Friendship, Hands, Lesbians, Medical Procedures, Mutual Pining, Nurses & Nursing, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29912823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: During the siege of Bastogne, two nurses home for Christmas find themselves thrown together both in a crisis and under the all-seeing eyes of God.
Relationships: Anna/Renee LeMaire, Augusta Chiwy/Renee LeMaire
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Heavy Artillery Rare Pair Exchange 2021





	Our daughters of sorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/gifts).



It was a sunny day outside and calm for once. The sky was clear and empty of all manmade things, only birds swimming in its blue like God had intended. 

The small apartment was modest and didn’t have much of anything except for a bed, a small table with three chairs and a closet-sized kitchen. But it was neat, warm and cosy, and Augusta was proud of her lodgings. It was her home, and in that small space she had made things she rather adored. The French balcony was her favourite thing about the apartment, and her most cherished possession was the icon of Virgin Mary she had hung on the wall above her bed. The blessed Lady of Sorrows watched over her, as Augusta knew plenty of sorrows herself.

She took the pot of roses to the kitchen to give the flowers their homecoming splash of water. The terracotta pot was nothing special, but the flowers in it were professionally cared for. The roses were small but in bloom. The small plant had managed five flowers total, each magnificent and the colour of deepest red. 

It was miraculous to be there in that moment. She was alive, all thanks to God and all the saints, and she was here, watering flowers. Why would she be upset at the sight of red anyway? It was the colour of life. If it spilled, it spilled, and it was the duty of a nurse to stop it from doing so to the best of their abilities. 

The roses were beautiful. She touched one of them carefully, its petals delicate and velvety against her fingertips. They were truly beautiful. Her heart raced in her chest, hard and insistent, turning her lightheaded. 

It was strange to think how long it had been, and stranger how at the same time a couple of years felt like nothing at all. How was it that there were mere weeks that felt longer and more important than whole years? 

*

They didn’t work together as much as they worked around each other. It was such a relief to have another actual nurse to work with, Augusta noticed soon. Not that she had anything against the army medics, but medics were simply medics. They were efficient and absolutely necessary, but they weren’t medical professionals.

There was always so much to do, and a nurse could see what was important and what needed tending to now, and how to keep the work from piling up. A nurse knew how to pick a task that complimented whatever the other was already doing.

Renée and Augusta hardly spoke when they worked, but it felt like their professional skills did the talking for them.

Whenever Augusta came to dump linen bandages to the ever-growing laundry pile and worried about running out and having to dash to fetch water to boil and hope it did the trick, she came to the room only to find Renée already at it. 

When there started to be so much flood and vomit on the floor that they were starting to slip in it, there was Renée already with a mop and rags when Augusta came back with a bucket of water. They took the rags and cleaned in tandem, automatically halving any area and working towards each other. 

When they were running out of needles, Augusta went to start the autoclave and there was Renée, assembling a tray of instruments that were vital.

Just setting eyes on Renée made Augusta feel lighter, knowing that her intuition and skill cut their workload down and managed the chaos around them. 

There was a pause every now and then, and they both knew to use the time wisely. After spending a week working together without really speaking at all, not even shaking hands, they finally managed to catch a meal at the same time. 

They ate the same slob the soldiers did, and Augusta didn’t complain. It was nothing like the meal at her father’s house an eternity ago – only nine days, she marvelled to herself as her watery meal was dumped on the tin plate – but it was hot and it was food, and her belly rumbled in demand of something passing for nutrition. Renée was standing in line with her, quiet as always and hopping up and down a little, clearly chilly in the winter weather on just her blouse and dress, her hair covered with a blue scarf. Her hands were stuffed deep in her skirt pockets, and even though she was standing there with Augusta and she was half turned to her, she didn’t speak to her.

It wasn’t unusual, and Augusta wondered if the other woman simply didn’t know what to say. For over a week, their skills had done the talking, and this first moment they managed to catch together felt strange.

They got their food and went back inside, the cold air a greater evil than the stuffy warmth and the stench of the aid station. Augusta had grown used to it anyway, and she knew there was more to come.

She followed Renée down to the chancel with its beautiful golden arcs and ornate credence table and a statue of Virgin Mary, the place they had stocked their supplies and stationed the portable stove with the various scavenged pots and their autoclave, and together they sat down on one of the benches.

“Can you believe this is the first hot meal we’ve gotten in days?” Augusta asked out loud as she fished her spoon underneath her shirt.

Renée jumped and turned to her in surprise when she spoke. “You speak French?” she asked, taken aback.

Augusta laughed at her. “Most Belgians do, don’t you think?”

“Oh!” Renée gasped, “I’m sorry, I thought you were American.”

“You did?” Augusta asked, gesturing down at her nurse’s uniform. “Well, I am not.”

“I’m sorry, I just… Assumed,” Renée said, and to her credit sounded like she was sorry too. “Are you from here?” 

“Yes and no,” Augusta said with half a shrug, going back to her meal. “This is my hometown. I came here as a girl from Congo, where I was born.”

“That sounds… Like a big change,” Renée said, following her example and starting to gobble up her meal. They had only a minute for it anyway, so that was wise.

Augusta shrugged, thinking back to the cloudy memories of her childhood. There weren’t many things she cared to remember, at least not that journey. “I suppose every change is a big one when it’s happening for the first time, especially to a young girl,” she commented. “But it doesn’t matter now. I am here. Can you believe I came here from the south to spend a Christmas at home? Some birthday of Christ all this will make.”

Renée let out a gentle humming sound, as close to a laugh as she could having slept so little and in a situation like that. The church felt both like an appropriate place for a field hospital and ironic at the same time. “Me too,” she said, “I think us fallible humans have little care for things like holidays. Taking a break from all of this would have been lovely.”

Augusta doubted either of them could have imagined mopping up so much blood from a church floor. “Well I’m glad I’m here with you,” she said, “having another nurse here among all these men sure is useful.”

“I know!” Renée sighed, her blue eyes lighting up. “I was thinking the same! They work hard, but men are… So messy. This would have never been accepted under the matron of the ward I’m used to working at.”

“Oh, you don’t say,” Augusta said, “When I was but a trainee, my matron would absolutely let us have it if there was so much as a bandage roll out of place! I dropped an instrument once, even. Can you imagine?”

“Ugh, I can!” Renée said, her mouth full and voice lighter. “I worked inside an operating theatre once under this really grumpy surgeon. He was always going on about how he’s so educated and enlightened and how he’s a true professional and how us lowly nurses should just follow his lead and do everything he says – and he wanted to tell us all the time. I would have liked to say, sir, I do know how to operate the autoclave, actually! I do know the instruments need to be clean, and no, I do not think this is my kitchen at home and these are my silverware!”

Augusta sniggered into her meal. She was nearly finished with it and couldn’t tell any living soul what it had been or how it tasted, having listened to Renée. 

*

The sound of an airplane was the worst. Augusta couldn’t say she had even paid any attention to those before the war. Planes were something high and out of her reach, as much physically as by circumstance. Their noise had been nothing to take note of, and that was that.

But now, that distant moan and rumble of them made her heart tremble like a rabbit’s in her chest and her feet scurry about. Now, whenever she heard the noise she felt a cold rush of fear run through her and set in her limbs. It even woke her up from sleep and she was afraid even before she knew why. It felt like her whole body had become a radio transmitter tuned to sense the fine ripples in the air to make her sense an airplane, even when she didn’t know she had heard it yet.

She hated airplanes now. They brough fire and bombs and death. Airplanes meant a new wave of patients in the next hour, but just as well it could mean their own demise. 

The bombings were something she couldn’t have ever imagined, and she was ashamed to even think that she missed the years of occupations only because there hadn’t been air raids like now.

Whenever she heard a plane, all she wanted was to dash to a cover, or at least freeze on the spot, curl up and pray that her spot would be a lucky one.

Still, she never did. She didn’t even freeze up for long, because even if to her the sound of an airplane was a sound of death and destruction in infuriating humming, to Renée it meant hope. No matter how dangerous, she always dashed on the move and went to see if it was a supply drop this time – she seemed to hope that it was, and even when cold horror gripped Augusta’s heart every time she saw her friend rushing outside towards that low rumble of death, it made her move too.

A nurse had no privilege of taking cover or stopping to pray. A nurse was a prayer herself – she kept stitching, bandaging, cleaning and healing even when bombs were dropping, and a supply drop was something they really could have used.

So when Renée dashed out to see what was going on, Augusta snapped out of her frozen fear and went back to work. There was always work anyway.

*

That chancel was their place. It was funny really, how something sacred had been utilized in such an ordinary way now that they didn’t really have room, with boxes of supplies just piled up where they might fit, and two very tired women covered in sweat and blood taking their momentary rest.

But then again, when Augusta sat there with her, it felt even more sacred. It wasn’t just Renée: She was hardly a saint with her hoard of chocolate, and hardly an angel with her matted hair, sickly pale skin and runny nose and blood caked in the creases of her skin and under her nails. Augusta knew she must have looked just about the same. 

But still, while sitting there on the floor and leaning against the table with their backs turned to the icons and the shining cross, it felt sacred.

Augusta stretched her legs out in front of her. Feeling was slowly returning into her aching feet and she sighed in relief as she rubbed them, even when knowing that soon she would have to get back on them and stand the pain before growing numb again. 

Renée watched her doing it with a smile as she slumped down as well, lounging there in front of God as if in a saloon and hummed in their shared relief. Augusta watched with a smile as she tipped her head back like one of those girls in magazines, exaggerated in how she basked in her momentary leisure, and just like that Augusta could imagine her at a beach during summer, wearing scandalous swimwear with a modern flare and paying no mind to anyone who might have stared or sneered. 

Renée would wear something blue and cute, something with a little white bow between her breasts and a knot behind her neck. Her brown hair would be clean and uncurled, because she wouldn’t care about that during long, hot summer days and she liked to swim. She would just be herself, beautiful and relaxed and grinning conspiringly back to Augusta, paying no mind to the men who looked her way.

Augusta didn’t want to return to the chilly church during winter but tried to make the dream image last. Renée’s smile belonged in peaceful, hot summer days at a beach, and that was where she wanted to stay. She felt almost warm for a moment, a glow deep within. 

Then Renée flopped onto her back, slumping more than posing and dug through her pockets. “Would you like some chocolate?” she asked, offering up a Hershey bar.

“Where did you – “ Augusta said, even when she didn’t really need to – and she didn’t want to know either.

Renée’s smile was barely a twitch of a mouth. “A shy, eager boy gave it to me. I was polite and good and accepted of course. We all need dreams, after all,” she explained, already peeling away the wrapper. “And I have a sweet tooth, what can I say? But even despite that, I wouldn’t be so selfish and keep it to myself. Here…” 

She broke off a large chunk of the bar and offered it with the tips of her bloody fingers to Augusta. “You need something sweet in your life as well,” she said. “I couldn’t exactly tell that poor boy that oh yes, I would like some chocolate, my fried Anna hasn’t had many good things in her life in a while now, and I so like bringing her sweets along with things like scalpels, plasma bottles and bloody rags.”

Augusta meant to refuse the treat. It was Renée’s after all, her gift and her luxury, but then again… How could she resist? A kind woman was offering her something sweet. She looked up to Renée, who smiled back encouragingly and offered the piece of chocolate up.

Before she could second guess herself, Augusta darted forward and snatched the treat from Renée’s fingers in her teeth and quickly leaned back to her side. She thought very highly of herself for such a quick move and retreat, but as soon as she looked back at Renée again, she realized that the other woman had definitely meant for her to take the chocolate from her with her fingers.

Augusta felt herself flushing and thanked the Lord for her dark complexion not making it too obvious, but couldn’t stop a coy hand from rising in front of her mouth as she chewed on the chunk of chocolate. 

Lucky for her, the surprise on Renée’s face passed and turned back into a smile, this one even warmer than the one before. She tilted her proud head down too as if averting her eyes from her friend, and Augusta had to admit that the cruel winter frost had bitten Renée’s face so red that she couldn’t tell if she was blushing or not.

But then again, maybe that was for the best. That’s what she concluded as they sat together for a few minutes more under the golden gross and the weeping statue of Mary. 

*

Once the wounded started coming, it seemed like they would never stop. The thunder of artillery fire could be heard and felt in the ground all the way from the line in Bastogne, and every time it started both Augusta and Renée thought it would the last time. 

This would be the time the enemy would break through, and this time they wouldn’t be coming to conquer or occupy. 

They didn’t speak of such things, but Augusta could feel it between them as clearly as spoken words as they stood outside of the church, something simply having a breather, sometimes sitting down in the open fresh air despite the cold. Sometimes even when taking buckets of human remains into the shallow graves they had had dug behind the church, lingering by when there was no hurry.

It was dirty work, but such was nursing. It was nothing. Carrying gory buckets of dead flesh out was nothing when the real threat was out there on the line.

Still, when she emptied the bucket Augusta found herself thinking of Moses and the Nile full of blood, also knee deep in the shallows of crimson. The Bible hadn’t mentioned the smell. 

Whenever the thunder begun, the jeeps and ambulances just kept coming, but not right away. When the bombing started, they could always spare to stand there for a minute of two, just watching the flashing lights in the horizon. 

It was curious, being back from the line but still vital in holding it. Augusta often felt like they were the final line of defence. The thought was topped off with gruesome knowledge that if the enemy were to break through and the Nazi army rolled in Bastogne, they would certainly come for the aid station, they would come for their patients, and they would shoot dead every nurse no matter the red cross for the crime of aiding the enemy. 

Sometimes during those moments, were it day or night, because artillery roared no matter the time of the day, when the two women stood outside side by side, Renée reached out and grasped Augusta's hand in hers. 

The distant thunder and the wave of carnage that would be soon rolling their way already had Augusta’s heart hammering in her chest, and she squeezed Renée’s dry, rough hand back. They were there together, standing against the tide of blood shoulder to shoulder. 

Augusta didn’t need to ask Renée anything. She trusted her utterly, and that same trust in her skill and competence was reflected back in the silence.

Everything was prepared as well as it could be – operating theatre clean and ready, instruments sterilized, available blankets folded and in piles, their remaining medicine accounted for and ready, the emergency booze ready when morphine couldn’t be spared – They were doing good work. 

This was all they needed from each other: A hand to hold, just for a second. For a second, they needed to feel each other there, warm and alive. Nurses worked with their hands, and Augusta knew just as surely about herself as she knew the other woman thought of her, that they trusted life in their hands. 

It was a privilege to hold the hand of a woman who did battle against death. That was why Augusta felt her heart leaping and racing away in her chest and tears brimming in her eyes. 

Then, a vehicle sounded, and before a nurse could even be called, they let go of each other and ran where they were needed.

*

They barely noticed it was Christmas. 

“Well, childbirth is bloody work as well, so perhaps this is more accurate than anything we usually do,” Augusta remarked when they were just finishing up with a patient. She had successfully made a cut in the right place between the man’s ribs, searched for the lung pouch and punctured it with her fingers, and finally pushed a catheter inside, and now watched as pink, foamy liquid bled out of the man and his breathing evened out, growing deep and calm once again. 

Renée was holding the man down by his shoulders and petting his sweaty, pale face in a calming manner. He was medicated almost to the point of delirium, but the feeling of drowning had been very distressing even without the sharp pain from the shrapnel punctures, and Renée had been instrumental in keeping the man calm while Augusta operated on him. Now he had calmed and relaxed, taking deep breaths and letting his eyes fall shut, drifting and muttering. 

“You may have a point,” Renée allowed, her strained voice relaxing as she moved to take the man’s pulse from his wrist. “Perhaps we should add a nurse to the nativity play. I’m sure Mary would have liked one of us by her side when she was labouring.”

“I second that,” Augusta quipped happily. She leaned her cheek over the patient’s face. “His breathing is normal.”

“Pulse sixty-seven per minute,” Renée noted and laid the man’s hand gently on his chest. Together they started to wrap him up to keep him warm. “I would have liked to be a nurse when we did the nativity play at school. I have terrible stage fright so I was never given speaking roles, but I was one of the angels once, in the very back.” 

“Lucky you,” Augusta replied, “I wanted to sing, but that wasn’t a part of the play, unfortunately. I got to be the other half of a camel once. Once I was the star of Bethlehem too.”

That almost made Renée laugh, a breath escaping her fast and her lips drawing into a smile. Just the smile took years off her face. “You were the star?” she asked, perhaps amused by the irony of the phrase. 

“The brightest and very silent,” Augusta replied with her chin tilted up in mock pride. 

“I guess they wanted to include every child, and there’s only so many farm animals you can fit into the play,” Renée said as they moved from the patient. 

“It is a kind thought,” Augusta admitted. 

For once it was calm. All the patients that needed tending to had been seen, and the medics working under the army surgeon were checking the vitals and keeping an eye on the patients that were unstable. There was always the constant chorus of some crying and moaning and groaning at the aid station, especially now that there was nowhere to evacuate anyone, but right then it could have almost been considered quiet. 

One of the medics in uniform, a boy of maybe twenty and so tired he looked like he was sleepwalking, approached them with an armful of dirty sheets from the beds, unceremoniously dumped them to Augusta and said to Renée: “Laundry. Captain’s orders.” 

He walked off, and the women looked as he went. When he was out of the hearing range, Renée scoffed. 

“It’s like working at the hospital again, but now it’s the orderlies who are rude,” she said and took half of the armful of sheets soaked in God knew what as they started their way to the chancel. 

“Just as thankless too,” Augusta commented as they walked together. 

“Well, no matter,” Renée said as they slipped from the men and their charges. “We can have some time for ourselves.” 

As Augusta was sorting their laundry, Renée slipped to her side after checking the coast was clear and reached underneath the bodice of her dress, pulling out a flask. 

Augusta had to swallow back a noise that was half shock and half a giggle, then hurried to look past Renée to make sure they were really alone.

“Renée! What is that and why do you have it?” she whispered as they went through the laundry, dumping bloody rags into the pot they had on the stove and tossing sheets into a large basket on the floor. 

“It is just a flask, with some watered-down cognac I’ve been saving” Renée said quietly, taking her own pile of fabric and started to sort it just like Augusta, making fast work of it without minding the filth. “It’s hardly much, but I’d like to share it with you.”

A thousand well-versed excuses about good upbringing and propriety came to Augusta’s mind and left the next second. She couldn’t help a sly smile, thinking that Renée might have been a daughter of a good family, but she certainly wasn’t too good herself. Besides, who was she to talk? Educated entirely by nuns, and still here she was, giggling about alcohol. 

The hours were long and the work aplenty, and even though Augusta was fairly sure it was Christmas Day, she wasn’t entirely clear if it was noon or very early morning. She didn’t think too much of it, having slept only an hour or two at a time for a week now, sometimes with several days awake in one go, and a little spark of joy felt inviting. 

They set the water for bandages boiling and sat down before the table, their own special place. They sat facing each other, leaning against the legs of the table and their feet crossed. Soon they’d catch a little bit of sleep until someone would call for a nurse, but right now Augusta as well as Renée felt it was worth it to stay awake a little longer. 

Renée shuffled closer and unscrewed the cork of the flask. It didn’t look like it belonged to her, Augusta gathered, even though she had no idea what Renée was like outside the aid station and her nurse’s uniform. There was something masculine about the flask, perhaps in its heavy carvings or the unknown emblem on it, or perhaps in just the habit of carrying alcohol on one’s person, but it didn’t seem like it belonged to Renée. 

Augusta thought that it might have been yet another gift from someone, but she didn’t like the thought at all. She might have nicked it from her father or an uncle or something, which was a more pleasant thought, even if it implied that Renée was in a habit of taking things that didn’t belong to her. 

Renée had a mischievous smile on her beautiful features when she took a quick whiff of the contents of the flask. She wrinkled her nose slightly, then promptly offered the flask to Augusta. “You first,” she encouraged her. 

Augusta felt like she was perhaps being challenged or teased, so she pursed her lips and took the flask. It was light, perhaps half full, and if the alcohol was watered down already, there wasn’t much punch in the dose. She brought the flask to her lips carefully, tilted her head back and let the liquid fill her mouth. 

Despite being watered down, the cognac still burned on her tongue and warmed her throat going down, and its chemical taste made her wrinkle her nose. She swallowed the mouthful and looked back at Renée just in time to see her giggling. She didn’t even look tired then, but keen and amused, alert even though she was leaning against the table to stay up.

Augusta hadn’t ever heard her laugh before. There was nothing to laugh about here, but for a second the woman with bloody hands and a greasy bundled up braid laughed like a girl who did something forbidden for the first time, and Augusta felt light and free. This was their ritual, their sacrament, their secret. She handed the flask back, and Renée accepted it, her fingers brushing over hers in their eagerness. 

Renée took her drink just like Augusta had done, holding the liquid in her mouth for a second before swallowing and then made a face. 

It was Augusta’s turn to laugh, and as she did, she realized she hadn’t so much as smiled either since the siege had begun. The sound was foreign and inappropriate. From where she was seated, she saw the statue of the Holy Virgin who stood like a reminded of all the sorrow they were surrounded by and should respect, but then her eyes flicked to the woman sitting at her feet. 

Renée was looking at her with something secret that was bared only to Augusta. There was a faint suggestion of a smile on her lips and her eyes were focused on her, studying her with such gentleness that Augusta forgot all of her guilt in a heartbeat. 

They didn’t speak but passed the flask between them twice more until it was empty, and Renée slipped it back under her dress again. They got up from the floor and went to the pile of blankets in the corner of the room, grabbed a few for themselves and huddled together on the carpet, backs pressed together. As she closed her eyes and let herself rest, Augusta wondered absentmindedly what else Renée was hiding underneath her clothes. 

*

It was getting to them all, it was clear. Everyone at the aid station was tired, worn right down to their souls with all that kept crashing at them.

The pile of bodies outside, blessedly kept from rotting by the freezing weather but still attracting crows and rats, was growing in size by every day. They had filled up the trenches of amputated limbs and guts and filth the bodies in their care produced, bucket after bucket of gore emptied in them like vegetable peels and scraps after butcher, and dug new ones. Soldiers – God, there was no end to the soldiers – kept coming to them, all crying and bleeding, and some of them dying. The lack of hospital level care caused even those they had been able to stabilize expire every now and then. 

Augusta knew she was just as exhausted as everyone else. She knew they couldn’t keep this up forever, that eventually they’d run out of supplies or that the seemingly endless line of soldiers would cease, the line would be broken, and then it would all be over. 

Still, she somehow harboured enough energy to not like the raven-haired medic boy who kept coming to them. 

Augusta didn’t make a habit of talking with strange Americans much unless needed, not that she had the time at the moment, but the boy clearly had time to talk to Renée, and Renée had time to talk to the boy. 

She didn’t want to judge. She had lived her entire life being friends with girls who liked handsome boys and she hadn’t felt the need to highlight that she didn’t, and she had seen plenty of girls and women during the war-time years looking for a little comfort in the arms of someone. It wasn’t a moral failing, she thought. She would have liked to do the same, just in her own way.

There was nothing wrong with it, perhaps the boy was simply excited to speak French with someone and that was all. But then Renée gifted him a chocolate bar, and Augusta had to consider that maybe Renée felt a kinship with the medic boy like he did with her. 

One day, a wounded man died under the hands of all three of them, and this time it was not Augusta to whom Renée looked. Augusta watched them watch each other, then promptly turned on her heel and walked out of the room to get back to work. 

Renée went with the boy. It was alright, she had deserved a little break. If talking with a pretty medic boy was the break she needed, then so be it. Little pleasures weren’t so many that any one of them could afford to pick the ones they approved of, and Renée’s pleasure was Augusta’s, even if it didn’t involve her. 

Later she came back down with another patient and without the medic, and Augusta hurried to help her. 

Yet another shrapnel wound cleaned and stitched, another bone set and supported with sticks and bed strips, yet another crying, praying boy calmed with a glass of homebrewed alcohol and Renée’s soothing hands. Yet another man whom they couldn’t help more than that, who had nowhere to go. 

They completed their round among the patients together, reported to the army captain who was their surgeon together, and then went on with the upkeep of the station. 

Yet another load of bloody laundry. Yet another round of emptying and cleaning potties, buckets and bottles – they had to make do with what they had. Yet another round of changing bandages to less dirty ones. Yet another load of boiled bandaged they had to hang out to dry. 

“Where that boy was from?” Augusta asked as they were draping bandages over the clothesline. 

“What boy?” Renée asked, clearly exhausted.

“That French-speaking medic with black hair,” Augusta specified and hoped she didn’t sound curious in the wrong way. 

“Oh,” Renée said, like sort of remembering him. “Louisiana, he said. America. He has Cajun blood in him.”

Augusta nodded. She might have been correct about the jumping on the chance of speaking French. She wondered if he too assumed that Augusta couldn’t speak it, or if he was one of those who preferred to act like a mixed woman didn’t exist in his presence. “What did he want?” she asked.

“I don’t think he wanted anything,” Renée replied. “Thank God for that, I’m so tired of all these men always wanting something,” she scoffed, somewhat bitterly. She sighed heavily, harshly wringing a bandage roll in her hands and forcing excess water out of it. “No, he seemed polite, maybe a little sad. He talked about God.” 

Augusta turned to look at her fully. It was hard to say if she seemed dreamy or if she was just tired. Her eyes stared far away, somewhere so far Augusta couldn’t reach it, perhaps into a future without her. 

“God?” she asked. 

A small smile twitched on Renée’s lips. “Yes. I think he was trying to comfort me with speaking of Him. Such a strange thing, considering where we are…” she mused, her head tilting back and staring up to the arching ceiling with the fresco on stars and scripture and angels, all supposedly watching over them. 

Only the suffering and dying looked up in here nowadays. Augusta mostly stared down at the bloody floor as she mopped, not up into the gold and blessing hands reaching down.

*

That night would stay with Augusta forever. She would never be able to forget it. Even when she was old and her black hair had turned white, sometimes she would still close her eyes and hear the low hum of airplanes and see the black night sky, flashing yellow and white here and there with artillery fire and see how the darkness was full of airplanes like a swarm of locust.

It felt like the sky was raining hellfire on them, and the town was ablaze. Everything burned, and the flames lit up the sky with horrifying orange. The noise was deafening, and the air was hot like it wasn’t the middle of the winter at all. It was smouldering hot suddenly, black smoke everywhere, and all the while the swarm of bombers in the sky drowned out the screaming and the roaring of flames in their constant, low humming. 

Augusta had no time for the horror of it. She would never understand it in her life, but even when her hometown around her seemed to have been cast to hell, she wasn’t afraid. Her feet were light and the only thing she felt clearly was the sense of duty; she was on a mission, and that one clear thought thrusted her into action.

When the church took a direct hit, at first she didn’t understand what had happened. The explosion shocked the entire building and brought the roof down, knocked down walls and silenced everything into muffled ringing. 

Augusta didn’t understand it for a moment. She had been in the side wing, finishing the stitches on a patient just fresh out of surgery, and in the next moment she was engulfed in the shockwave of the explosion and thrown off her feet, landing on her back several meters from the room she had been in.

Blinking on the ground, she gathered enough of her wits to sit up and locate herself. She was outside now. Had she been thrown through a wall? It seemed so, except there was no longer a wall. She glanced down at herself and saw her dress and stockings torn and bloody bruises all over her arms and legs, but she couldn’t feel any of it yet. She concluded that she was most likely in a state of shock.

Then, she heard a voice screaming, but not screaming like so many others, but one calling her. 

“Anna! Anna, where are you!? Anna!” 

It was Renée’s voice, reaching her like under water. Augusta was still looking her own arms over while sitting on the ground, but she felt compelled to answer: “Here!” 

Renée came running around the corner and dropped down in front of her. “Anna!” she cried, grasping her by the shoulders, “Are you hurt?!” 

Augusta blinked up at her, a thought trying to clear through the mist in her head. She felt oddly numb, her ribs and legs throbbing even though nothing registered. “Renée,” she said softly, staring at her friend. She looked awful, her blue scarf was gone, her hair full of grovel and her face bloody and blackened. “I’m okay,” Augusta said, “are you?”

“Yes, yes I’m fine,” Renée said, her hands anxiously petting Augusta’s shoulders and sobbed through a relieved smile, her eyes glistening. Her moment of emotion lasted only a second, but it was enough to snap Augusta out of the haze. She shook her head and looked around. 

“Anna, we’ve – “

“We’ve been hit,” Augusta finished for her. 

“Anna, the patients, we have to – “ Renée explained, and she didn’t even need to finish the sentence before they were both already scrambling up and running back towards the front of the church. 

The building was on fire and in the process of grumbling down. The air was scourging and the closer to the building they got, the worse it became, but they could still hear wailing and crying from the inside, a terrible chorus of pain. Despite all the other noise, the artillery and the blazing guns and the dropping bombs, the desperate crying of the wounded from the church pierced through. 

They didn’t need words, they never did when it counted, and together Augusta and Renée rounded the corner and charged through the unsteady arch of a door inside, holding their breaths and squinting their tearing eyes against the smoke and the heat. Renée grasped Augusta’s hand and led her inside, and together they ran until they found the first patient, still lying on the stretcher and crying out in blind panic, reaching with his hands and with no legs. 

They had done it a thousand times before, and so they let go of each other to grab the stretcher, picked it up and ran back out the way they came. 

With the patient safely outside, they took each other by the hand again and ran back inside, back into the blaze of red and black, and easily found the next patient on the stretcher and brought him out. 

They both knew they had too many patients. They were racing against time and fire and the grumbling building and there just wasn’t enough time, but as long as they could, they kept moving. 

When the wandering civilians and the surviving army personnel around saw what they were doing, a few joined them in their efforts, following the two women at first and once they knew the way, working on their own. 

They carried men out on stretchers and on their shoulders, they ran and kept running as long as they could bear, and then kept going after that. 

Then, Augusta realized that she couldn’t find Renée’s hand anymore. She looked up and didn’t see the other woman anywhere. Her concentration snapped just like that, and in a flood came the fear, panic and pain as she spun around and around, eyes wild and looking for her friend. 

She was standing out on the yard alone, surrounded by rows of evacuated, coughing and gasping patients and scrambling soldiers and civilians among them. The air raid was still happening, the sky was still ablaze, and all around were disoriented, wounded and lost people. But no Renée. 

With a freezing realization Augusta realized that the other woman hadn’t followed her out after their last run inside. Augusta with a soldier over her shoulders had been leading the way and here she stood outside, suddenly alone, and there was only a pile of rubble and broken beams where there had just been a doorway into the church. 

There wasn’t a gaping mouth of hell anymore either, no flames or smoke or the wailing of the tortured poor devils, only a pile of cooling rocks, like black teeth that had ground all that was dear and good into pieces. 

During the coming days, Augusta was not sure if she had actually wailed then or was that just in her mind. Did she really let out such an animal howl of terror and grief as she thinks she did, or was that simply how she had felt then?

She couldn’t tell, but what she did remember was running back and starting to dig.

*

There was a lot of cleaning and fixing to do still, years after the war. There were freshly filled bomb craters in the middle of the roads, buildings demolished and rubble just cleared out without anything in its place. Some things were just gone, and some were permanently damaged. 

Renée wondered how any human being had even survived the merciless warfare when buildings made of brick and stone had grumbled and burned away, but so it simply was. There were many things she didn’t really understand, and no matter how much she wondered, certain mysteries didn’t clear up. 

There was new cobblestone on the streets, and in some places fresh pavement where there should have been cobblestone. It was a bit of a shame to see how something beautiful and old had been violently destroyed and now replaced with something quick and easy. 

She found the hospital easily, and from there she followed the directions she had memorized from the letter. 

Ever since the war and her traumatic injury, Renée’s parents had turned distant. Had she still been a nurse and encountered this with a patient, she was sure she would have understood and worked it out, but with her own disability and her own parents she was too close to see clearly. She couldn’t tell if it were the ugly burn scars or the missing arm that had turned the previously admiring looks into rude gawking, or was it the loss of her noble profession, or pity, or something else about her. 

Still, even if distant, they were kind, and Renée couldn’t say she minded the new dresses and hats and shoes. 

Especially today she was glad she was looking her best. She had saved this particular dress. Its cut wider now that the rationing of fabric had ceased in France, the green colour was beautiful and the flowing skirt left her feeling much freer than the narrow skirt of her uniform, and she missed it a little less now that she could take longer steps. 

The loss of her left arm was something of a tender spot for her still. There simply wasn’t a scarf beautiful enough in the world to bundle up the stump that was left to make her forget about it, or anything to cover up the rubbery bubblegum-like skin of her shoulder and neck. It was what it was, and Renée focused on keeping the bag over her right shoulder and keeping the gift inside secure with the hand that she still had and kept walking.

The dormitory-like building with apartments for young working women was a new one, built with money from donors and professional orders of nurses, physicians and nuns. The lobby of the building was guarded by an older matron so stern that Renée suspected any of the women living there would even dare to dream of sneaking a boyfriend past her. She knew the rules of housing like this even without the rules plastered on the bulletin board in the lobby, the first rule being “Women only”. 

Renée knew the motivation behind the rule and even though she was technically allowed, when announcing herself to the matron as a guest for one Ms. Chiwy who lived on the top floor, she felt so obvious in her best dress and a gift hidden away in a bag over her shoulder that she wanted to turn herself in.

She didn’t, something of the old Renée remaining as stern and brave as she liked to think herself, and she embarked to the staircase.

Behind Anna’s door, she still hesitated. She tugged at the hem of her skirt and stared down at the tips of her pretty shining shoes and wondered if it was all too much. The bag over her shoulder had been sewed out of an old potato sack, so that at least brought her down to earth, but the gift itself felt very obvious in the crook on her arm and wouldn’t let her back down now.

She fixed her hair, took one final deep breath, and knocked. 

She had thought herself brave, but still wasn’t prepared to see Anna. When the door opened and a familiar face greeted her in the doorframe, she felt her breath catching in her throat. 

Anna’s big brown eyes lit up at the sight of her even when her face was kept reserved by the same uncertainty Renée felt herself. 

She was a shockingly beautiful sight. She had her hair trimmed into a style Renée couldn’t properly describe and wanted to ask about, her bangs in handsome victory curls, and she was wearing a simple black skirt and a yellow sweater.

After Renée got her breath working again, she smiled. “Hi, Anna,” she greeted softly.

Anna’s face melted into a smile. “Hi, Renée,” she replied, then perked up and stepped aside. “Please, come in.” 

“Thank you.” 

It was a small apartment but bathed in sunlight and with lots of care in it. Renée admired the carefully embroidered comforter on the small bed guarded and blessed by the Mother of God above it, the small garden on the French balcony and the neatness of it all. It was a small room, but decorated with a care of a woman who was proud of her own space. 

“Would you like some coffee?” Anna asked, fussing with her skirt.

“Oh, I don’t need – “ Renée started to refuse, then reconsidered, “only if you insist. And you have some too.”

Anna smiled, her eyes warm. “I do,” she said, turned around and went to the kitchen.

Renée took the bag off her shoulder carefully and set it on one of the chairs by the table. Quickly she peeked into the bag to make sure her gift was still as well as it had been when she had packed it up for herself at work. 

“Have you been well?” she called to the kitchen.

“Yes, thank you,” Anna replied cheerfully. “I have a nice time at the ward I work at. The other nurses are very sweet and kind, I’ve made so many friends. I like the hospital, but I’ve considered I might want to move into a bigger city and become a district nurse. It sounds so exciting!” 

It did, Renée agreed, and once she had dreamed of work like that as well. It still stung, but she didn’t want to ruin it for the other. “It sounds grand. You would be a natural at it too, I’m sure,” she said.

Anna came out of the kitchen carrying coffee cups and saucers. “That’s sweet of you to say,” she said as she set the table. “City life might be fun too. I’d like to go to the pictures on my nights off and try more than just one café.”

Out of a habit, Renée reached out to help with setting the table even though coffee for two was hardly anything one needed help with. Still, Anna let her do so, naturally halving the task with her.

“What’s with the bag?” she asked.

“Oh,” Renée said and smiled. There was no turning back now. “I wanted to bring you something from the flower shop I work at nowadays.” She reached down, opened the bag and pulled out a pot with a red miniature rose. “Here. This is for you.”

Anna drew in a breath when she saw the flower, her eyes widening and a hand coming to touch her lips. 

“Renée…” she started, gentle and obviously touched, “it’s beautiful.” 

Something like a relief settled in Renée’s chest at that. “I didn’t want to cut anything, so I picked something that can keep growing and thriving. Granted, it’ll probably need a bigger pot sooner or later, but… I thought of you and wanted you to have it.” 

There was a small smile growing on Anna’s lips, her kind mouth drawing into a smile that was more than her regular kindness. That something more was in the sparkle in her eyes and the dark spots on the apples of her cheeks, something Renée had learned to search for. 

She was oddly relieved that some things remained, that what was genuine and raw about the woman hadn’t been buried underneath peacetime humdrum or casual beauty. She couldn’t help but to glance at the icon on the wall and feel just a little bit blessed, even with her wounds. 

Encouraged as if by a mother, she drew in a deep breath. “The truth is, you see…” 

Her eyes flicked to Anna’s, and the look there made her hesitate. There was something fearful in the eyes of the other woman now, not shocked or surprised, but just cautious enough to make Renée rethink if she should continue. The moment was enough for Anna to step back and take the pot of roses and excuse herself to the kitchen.

Renée stayed by the table. The moment was slipping from her fingers. 

“I need to tell you,” she said before she could finish the though and followed Anna to the kitchen.

Anna was by the sink and giving the roses water, her wide eyes turning to Renée. “What?”

For a few moments more Renée hesitated. She felt like an intruder, simultaneously too bold and too meek, but like a hundred times before, she remembered she wasn’t just fooling around but really meant what she was about to say. It was serious, and it deserved to be cleared up. “I need to tell you – and I need to know… Was it just… Was it only in my head?”

Anna didn’t reply, just kept cradling the roses.

“What we were – and what I think we felt, under Holy Mother’s eyes?” Renée remembered it so distinctly, and the image had become so much cleared with time, her dreams and their letters. 

So much blood and chill and pain and misery, but in the midst of it, in a sacred place, blessed by Our Lady of Sorrows…

An angel. A woman so short and modest and covered in filth, but her hands caked in blood from battling death. An angel who fought against death one stich, one operation, one pinch of a vein, one load of laundry, one bandage and one brace at a time.

An angel who had dug her out of the fire and stove-hot rubble. An angle who had seen her crushed arm, burned skin, and noticed at once she had breathed in smoke and fire, left scourged from the inside and gasping. 

But when Renée tried to voice all that she felt, the words stuck in her throat. They were too heavy, too meaningful and too much. “You were…” she tried, desperate, “You were my breath. You made me breathe.”

Anna just looked on, and even if her smile faded the light in her eyes did not. Renée liked to think that those few weeks together had meant so much that she knew her better than any frivolous friend she might have made over the years.

“It was not only in your head,” Anna said suddenly. Her smile was back, and it was of different sort this time, one Renée had never seen before, and hoped no other man or woman had either.

Anna opened her mouth as if to say something, but only a frustrated huff came out. She shook her head and averted her eyes. “I have to tell you – “ she began again, “before you go any further, at least. I have to let you know that I am an independent sort of a woman. Someone with a quite unorthodox fancy towards women, and especially towards you. I mean to say, I suffer a bit of love for you.” 

Renée was stunned speechless again, light in both her limbs and head as if she had indulged herself with cognac at Christmas again, and it wasn’t just alcohol that burned her lips from the mouth of the silver flask. 

She opened her mouth and a teary laugh came out. “I brought you red roses, Anna,” she said.

Anna looked at the passion red flowers before her and laughed too. “Yes, so you did,” she said, laughed again and wiped her eyes. 

“I love you some too,” Renée said, just to be fair. 

“Oh,” Anna said, smiling, “That’s good then.”

“It is?”

“It very much is.” 

It felt like puzzle pieces clicking together and revealing the beautiful work of art they were always meant to be. It was heavenly in the small kitchen, and something like that moment confirmed to both women what others saw in things like dating and marriage. 

Just to be held and kissed by the right kind of a person was the key. To hold and kiss a woman and hold her life-giving hands was the final missing piece both had held onto for a while now, and with that piece in place the picture was complete. 

It was heaven in that small cupboard of a kitchen, to be just as God had made them, together.


End file.
